I’ve got no problem with him.

I HAVE, however, stopped hanging out with several friends who are Obama supporters based upon their behavior regarding his candidacy.

Friend: How can not be supporting Obama? He’s so INSPIRATIONAL!

Me: Um, I wasn’t inspired.

Friend: Have you ever heard him speak?

Me: Sure. He’s a good speaker. I agree with a lot of what he says. But I agree with a lot of what Clinton says too, and think she’ll be a better President.

Friend: You weren’t MOVED by his message?

Me: Not particularly, but I don’t give a lot of weight to rhetorical and fluff like that. Otherwise, I would have voted for Reagan — which I didn’t.

Friend (getting defensive): Oh, so you think he’s all rhetorical and fluff??

Me: No, I didn’t say that. I just said that I wasn’t inspired by him, and if your primary argument for his candidacy is that he’s inspiring, and I wasn’t inspired, I don’t know where we go from there.

Friend: He’s got substance too!

Me: Sure he does. I just think Clinton has more . . .

[We go around in circles for a while, and then I decide not to visit this friend for a while. . . . I really hope the nomination is resolved before Little League starts, because she's one of my assistant coaches.]

Yes, a coup of the pledged delegate leader by superdelegates is within the rules, but it has never actually happened before*, because for some reason even Democratic Party insiders probably feared that such actions would be widely perceived as being completely morally illegitimate. For some reason.

*By “white person”, I don’t mean to gloss over the historicity of Clinton’s own campaign, and because of that I suspect the backlash would be somewhat less than if it happened to someone more disgustingly typical of same old - like a Vilsack or a Biden. Nevertheless, it would be enough to destroy the Party.

**Contrary to some misinformed posts I see in the liberal blogosphere, superdelegates never handed Mondale the nomination. He had a commanding pledged delegate lead over Hart, and superdelegates acted on the paranoid suspicion that an alliance between Hart and Jackson could eke out an extremely improbable comeback, to cement his nomination.

I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances.

As an African-American the arguments about SCOTUS and other Democratic party policies as being more important than the

The fact is that a Clinton Presidential or Vice Presidential nomination will set a dangerous precedent that you can completely write black voters off and succeed.

And considering the piss poor job Dems have done with issues like HIV/AIDS, the prison-industrial complex and other issues that disproportionately hurt blacks any event that gives already disinterested politicians the go ahead to completely ignore us IS worse than the things that you mention.

I lose when the kind of race-baiting succeeds and I will not be blackmailed into voting for someone when they clearly don’t give a rat’s ass about me or the issues that affect me.

Clinton = McCain for many blacks. If you don’t like that don’t complain to me complain to the people in the party who have sat back and done nothing in the wake of her attacks on us.

Crys T, although I’m supporting Obama, I completely agree with you. The differences between Obama and Clinton are not — or should not be, anyhow — a big deal to any leftist or progressive. And I’m confused by it, too.

Okay, but I think there’s something more important than the policies candidates claim to support on the campaign trail. Clinton, like her husband, represents the wrong faction within the Democratic Party.

Ah, but they are different, and “progressives” aren’t any more immune to those differences than they often think.

How I hate that word.

What’s interesting is that you can actually still vote for a Democratic candidate and be a traitor to the cause (which if more often how third-party-voters are looked at during the final round) this time around.

Maybe if McCain wins, instead of blaming the third-party voters, the members of the Democratic Party will take a good hard look at what they represent and how “progressive” it really is. Then again, probably not.

I get the “anything’s better than more of the same” argument. But then, really either ofthe Democratic frontrunners will do, right? What I don’t get is progressives acting as if a win for their candidate, be it Hillary or Obama, really truly will be some sort of blow for Real Change. To the point that they’re acting as if any other progressive who chooses the other candidate is some sort of traitor.

What is it about this whole campaign that is whipping them up to this level?

That said, I never said I wouldn’t vote for him. I did say a large part of my decision will be based on what the DNC does between now and then. If Howard Dean can manage to get his nose out of Obama’s ass and MI and FL get a fair shot at being enfranchised and Obama wins the nom anyway, I would consider voting for him. If they don’t, then it will officially be the end of my association with the Democratic party.

Or to put it another way: The current driver is insane and heading us toward a cliff. We want to replace him with someone who can drive and steer us in another direction. Even if we wind up in a ditch, it’s an improvement.

Along those lines, here’s a similar analogy. The current driver is greedy and evil (as I’m not comfortable insulting mentally people by calling Bush insane) heading us toward a cliff. I suppose one strategy is to replace him with someone who can drive and steer us in another direction…off a different cliff. But hey, at least it’s a prettier view on the way down.

But the same can be said about Obama’s campaign. One of his key selling points for many people is his ability to win over centrists and swing voters, and even conservatives.

He appeals to centrists and conservatives as people, not through the issues - that is his selling point. (Granted, his positions aren’t particularly liberal to begin with.) In doing so, he brings the political center of gravity to the left. Similar to Reagan. He appealed to white liberals and progressives without moving to the left, and in doing so instead pulled his followers to the right.

That is wholly different from giving into Republican demands, letting them frame the debate, out of a weak-kneed fear of the centrist voter, who in the centrist Dem’s mind is something like a hayseed chewing extra from a spaghetti western. I don’t buy for one minute that prominent Democratic Senators were “misled” by Bush, when everyone from moderate Republicans to bum bloggers to many members of their own freaking party could clearly see what was going on. No, Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, et. al. were all eyeing future presidential runs and thought that a little gross immorality would be an acceptable price to pay in order to pander to hawkish voters. They have since learned otherwise. Of course, Kerry and Edwards have since at least apologized for their votes, while Clinton is still going to extreme lengths to twist what her motivations were when it’s plainly obvious to anyone sitting outside.

*You may ask why I’d support a moderate Republican over a right-centrist Dem, since the two at best amount to the same thing. The reason is that there is the dual effect of rewarding moderation in the Republican Party and purging DLC’ers and New Dems from the Democratic Party. I’d take a defunct, collapsed Democratic Party over a right-centrist “slightly better than Republicans” one, any day. At least the defunct party has the opportunity to rebuild into something better within a decade, maybe less. I begrudgingly respect hardline conservatives for what they did to the GOP after the Goldwater debacle. I would definitely consider the same for the Dems.

** A meaningful claim to me would be being ahead in the popular vote but behind in pledged delegates. I understand that pledged delegates were the rule of the game and that the entire process would have been played differently if the popular vote was the goal from the outset, but it at least has some grounding and can appeal to democratic impulses.

OTOH, making up ad hoc criteria on what states and what Democratic constituents *really need* does not, because first of all, in a 50/50 nation, every part is essential. We need AA voters just as much as we need senior voters, and we need Virginia and Oregon just as much as we need Ohio. And secondly, such intentional rendering of divisions is stupid and should be rewarded by SD’s moving in the opposite direction.

What I don’t understand is why people who consider themselves much more to the Left than that seem to be so invested in this. Surely for them voting for Hillary or Obama is still a case of going for the lesser of two evils?

Because we’re so traumatized by the past 7 years, we’ll take anything short of More Of The Same.

Or to put it another way: The current driver is insane and heading us toward a cliff. We want to replace him with someone who can drive and steer us in another direction. Even if we wind up in a ditch, it’s an improvement.

Love,
Mr. Sunshine

I have to admit that I haven’t studied either Clinton or Obama in any great detail. Partly because I couldn’t vote for either of them even if I wanted to, but mainly because as far as I can see, the Republicans are a far-Right party and the Democrats are just the tiniest smidgen to the Left of them (but still overlapping quite a bit) and there’s no way in hell I’d ever give my vote to a party that conservative.

So, my question is this (and it’s absolutely not rhetorical, I honestly don’t see it and want to know): what is it about these two that is inspiring such devotion amongst people who self-identify as progressive? I get why people who are party-line Democrats or whose beliefs do happen to generally mesh with the Democrats would get heated up about this campaign. What I don’t understand is why people who consider themselves much more to the Left than that seem to be so invested in this. Surely for them voting for Hillary or Obama is still a case of going for the lesser of two evils?

I’m quite liberal, as is my husband. I wish the country were further to the left. Neither Clinton nor Obama is liberal enough for me or my husband. but we both voted for Clinton in our primary. I am more undecided than my husband between the two. But we both agree on one thing — we are voting Democrat in the fall. For all the reasons you cite.

This is one of the reasons I prefer closed primaries. I think voting in the primary means you agree to abide by your party’s choice — which means you vote for your party in the general or not at all (if you really can’t bring yourself to vote your party). But that’s a whole other debate!

The Greens thing is a bit different. I can easily see that people who adhere to the Green platform would be willing to make significant Bush-in-2004 style sacrifices to get the long term benefit of a Green party that was a real player.

But if your adherence to the Green party line starts to slip, then those shorter term consequences start getting really, really expensive. I don’t entirely get the “protest vote for Green” thing, except in states where it’s a no brainer who will win, or unless you vote swap with someone in a slam dunk state. It’s not that it doesn’t make any sense, but the cost/benefit seems too big.

By the way, for those who follow these things:
the 9th Circuit has refused to grant en banc rehearing to the vote-swapping-for-Nader cases, which means in this case that it has upheld its prior ruling that such swapping was legal and Constitutionally protected.

What I think is a mistake is being willing to vote for Obama but hating and despising Clinton too much to ever vote for her; Obama and Clinton aren’t identical politically, but they’re similar, and someone willing to vote for one of them over McCain ought to be willing to vote for the other, unless their vote is based on something other than policy and strategy.